31 Aug 2015

The government has the end of this month as the target to cancel the backlog of projects under the poverty eradication programme.

Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Dikgang Makgalemele told the Central District Council leadership consultative meeting recently that the government was worried about the high number of backlog projects. He added that training, procurement, and monitoring of projects were also lagging behind.

He said the government was concerned that potential beneficiaries were denied opportunities due to the backlog. Mr Makgalemele also noted that there were concerns from assessed and registered beneficiaries about the delay in training, procurement and monitoring.

“Stop new registrations and deal with the backlog, you will start new registrations on October 1 after eradicating the backlog,” the assistant minister said. 

He said there was no point in assessing and registering new clients while there were some beneficiaries from 2012 who were yet to receive packages. Mr Makgalemele said the government had considered engaging temporary and part-time workers to augment staff, noting that it was one of the contributing factors to the backlog.

The assistant minister said the government would help with logistics to ensure that the backlog was eradicated by independence day. 

The district poverty eradication coordinator, Ms Neo Sekape raised concern that the number of trainers engaged to train beneficiaries was high. Some of the beneficiaries, she said, were not educated enough, making it difficult for them to understand the information shared. 

The chairperson of the CDC, Mr Peter Williams suggested that poverty eradication should be an independent and fully resourced department in order to deal with challenges facing the  initiative.

Mr Williams said backlog would still be a challenge because the programme was implemented by different departments which were already understaffed and under resourced. Other officers called for direct appointment of suppliers to avoid time taken on the tendering processes. 

Some officers also said they would try to cluster training even though trainers had the tendency to charge exorbitant prices. Meanwhile, Mr Makgalemele said the government embraces cooperatives as they had the potential to benefit more people. Ends